Archive for February, 2006

Let me tell you something of my shameful past… Some years ago I was very self-conscious, very low in self-esteem and very unconfident as a person. I was one of those people who seemed to find fault in most things other people did. I well remember criticising people over the smallest of things, often publicly, often unfairly.

[I’m glad they didn’t have blogs around then or no doubt many of my shameful words would be preserved in a google cache somewhere.]

A few years later I started to grow up. Around that time I also discovered the VFP community and was amazed at how generous the people in it were. The smartest, highest achievers were the most caring and nurturing to others. All people were accepted and the ‘vibe’ was incredibly positive.

And importantly, the VFP community has always been one to sort out differences with the utmost respect to all involved (well, atleast from what I’ve seen).

I feel I’ve personally changed a great deal since then (hopefully for the better {g}!).

I tell you these things for two reasons: 1. To be the first to admit I’m far from perfect, and 2. to indicate how influential the VFP community has been on me.

So it has saddened me to see the chatter on UT and some blogs concerning a recent decision by SednaX. A decision has been made that has divided some people. So far not a problem. There will always be disagreements, differences of opinion and ofcourse mistakes being made (not that I’m suggesting one has or has not been made in this case). But what we as a community need to uphold is the high respect for people that we always have. It is a great shame to see name calling, cheap shots, and such heated debate over what is in reality a small issue.

So, my appeal is simple. People, please realise every one of us represent the community. We must all stay focussed on the greater good of VFP and the community, even if personal opinions are challenged.

Close

I know this will sound like complete overkill, but my boss says we should always write (and speak) as if the person discussed dies in a tragic accident the next day. We must write today in a way that we never regret tomorrow.

Let me tell you something of my shameful past… Some years ago I was very self-conscious, very low in self-esteem and very unconfident as a person. I was one of those people who seemed to find fault in most things other people did. I well remember criticising people over the smallest of things, often publicly, often unfairly.

[I’m glad they didn’t have blogs around then or no doubt many of my shameful words would be preserved in a google cache somewhere.]

A few years later I started to grow up. Around that time I also discovered the VFP community and was amazed at how generous the people in it were. The smartest, highest achievers were the most caring and nurturing to others. All people were accepted and the ‘vibe’ was incredibly positive.

And importantly, the VFP community has always been one to sort out differences with the utmost respect to all involved (well, atleast from what I’ve seen).

I feel I’ve personally changed a great deal since then (hopefully for the better {g}!).

I tell you these things for two reasons: 1. To be the first to admit I’m far from perfect, and 2. to indicate how influential the VFP community has been on me.

So it has saddened me to see the chatter on UT and some blogs concerning a recent decision by SednaX. A decision has been made that has divided some people. So far not a problem. There will always be disagreements, differences of opinion and ofcourse mistakes being made (not that I’m suggesting one has or has not been made in this case). But what we as a community need to uphold is the high respect for people that we always have. It is a great shame to see name calling, cheap shots, and such heated debate over what is in reality a small issue.

So, my appeal is simple. People, please realise every one of us represent the community. We must all stay focussed on the greater good of VFP and the community, even if personal opinions are challenged.

Close

I know this will sound like complete overkill, but my boss says we should always write (and speak) as if the person discussed dies in a tragic accident the next day. We must write today in a way that we never regret tomorrow.

Adam is one of only two Microsoft Regional Directors in Australia and an internationally recognised authority on .Net, SQL Server, Team System, Project Management and various ‘Rules’ (which he recently discussed on .Net Rocks). He will be discussing Rules to Successful Projects at OzFox Lite.

Sunny is well known for his passion in promoting VFP and VFP products to the anyone and everyone! Sunny has run an extremely succesful software company delivering hosted VFP solutions to many clients. He will be discussing his experiences and providing insights into how to offer hosted (eg Citrix or Terminal Server based) solutions.

Andrew Coates blogs about his Team System experience here – so far so good. (And yes, like him we are hanging out for the new provider so we can ease it into our VFP development). My comments below are mainly focussed on management (not development).

I’m pleased to say our initial experiences are good also (although we are only using it on the .Net side of things so far). We are now well into a big project built on .Net 2.0, SQL 2K5 and TFS. And whilst the setup has taken a bit of work (and we can thank Scott Wakefield our Web Development Manager for some long hours getting that working – btw Scott when are you going to start blogging?) overall the effort is paying off. (As an aside, he had just got everything running well on B3 when the RC came out – Scott made the call to upgrade straight away – and whilst it cost him another weekend of long hours – he definately made the right decision.)

Benefits

So what does it give you? [Before starting however, it should be noted there is some way to go before TS is the tool the hype anticipates.]

But straight away the biggest point scorer for us has been the ability to open up our internal TFS server to our clients. We have given our client access to our full project management tasks, documentation, questions forum, design diagrams, build history, project KPIs and progress in a second. A subset of all the information that we use internally is now available to our clients externally via a simple https:// link. The portal functionality basically comes out of the box. And every change we make, build we check, document we update etc is immediately available to our cilent.

And TFS gives you the ability to set up alerts for instant notification. All this at no cost to us, other than the initial setup which we had to do anyway.

To me this is an awesome boost in professionalism – perception is everything remember! – and we were very excited to deliver this to our clients. They love it by the way.

The second thing I like is the workflow it gives – out of the box most people will go with the MSF agile methodology template and strip it back (top down). This is OK but not great, ideally you want to spend the time building a template that matches your internal processes (ie bottom up). Scott Scovell has been working on this side of things but it wasn’t ready in time for our current project. (Scott will be blogging about that side of things in due course.)

The third main point is the developer tools it gives. Now, it’d be wrong of me to cover these – honestly I haven’t got anywhere near that level of detail (sadly I mainly manage these days – my days of developing are fast fading) so I’ll leave that for the Scotts to discuss later. However I’ve seen how the guys use it and they are very positive about the clarity it brings to the workload – it is a no brainer as to what they need to do, when to do it and how much time they’ve been allocated to do it. Not that this is a new concept to any company, but now developers have a simple way of managing their tasks without leaving their development environment. This is one of the main points Team System promised, and I feel it has delivered well.

My focus in TFS has been how we as a company can use it to improve processes, developer productivity, customer involvement and overall project management. As a software manager I am very cautious when it comes to using Beta products, so the move to running a large project on a product not yet released has been a careful one.

Cost considerations

I’d like to point out that this particular project has 5 developers working on it, so the cost of the setup is able to be absorbed over their combined resource. Had the project been smaller the cost may not have been so quickly repaid. So be careful about jumping into a TFS based system – the time taken to get it working for your project is not minimal. However, once done, it is easily used on all projects.

Also, we have TFS on a dedicated server. In our case this is a dual Xeon blade, since we want it to handle growth. But, don’t assume you are going to get away with one of the old unused desktop machines hanging around your office. Note also that TFS uses SQL Server, so you will need to handle that requirement also. Licensing is a sore point to some, but just part of the cost of good project management in my opinion. (Note – TFS includes a SQL license for its own purposes).

My opinion, although I don’t really know what the Microsoft line on this is, is that TFS is not a small company (eg 1 – 4 developer) option. Not that it couldn’t still be used, but I question the ROI it’d deliver.

Summary

Summary, TFS has a resonable cost that needs to be carefully factored in to the decision.

However, if the cost is acceptable (or trivial as it will be in the big shows) then the power, productivity and perception that TFS promises is certainly possible. I’m far from convinced that .Net as a technology has delivered anywhere near what we’ve all hoped for, however, without doubt TFS has given software development a huge push forward.

Adam is one of only two Microsoft Regional Directors in Australia and an internationally recognised authority on .Net, SQL Server, Team System, Project Management and various ‘Rules’ (which he recently discussed on .Net Rocks). He will be discussing Rules to Successful Projects at OzFox Lite.

Sunny is well known for his passion in promoting VFP and VFP products to the anyone and everyone! Sunny has run an extremely succesful software company delivering hosted VFP solutions to many clients. He will be discussing his experiences and providing insights into how to offer hosted (eg Citrix or Terminal Server based) solutions.

Andrew Coates blogs about his Team System experience here – so far so good. (And yes, like him we are hanging out for the new provider so we can ease it into our VFP development). My comments below are mainly focussed on management (not development).

I’m pleased to say our initial experiences are good also (although we are only using it on the .Net side of things so far). We are now well into a big project built on .Net 2.0, SQL 2K5 and TFS. And whilst the setup has taken a bit of work (and we can thank Scott Wakefield our Web Development Manager for some long hours getting that working – btw Scott when are you going to start blogging?) overall the effort is paying off. (As an aside, he had just got everything running well on B3 when the RC came out – Scott made the call to upgrade straight away – and whilst it cost him another weekend of long hours – he definately made the right decision.)

Benefits

So what does it give you? [Before starting however, it should be noted there is some way to go before TS is the tool the hype anticipates.]

But straight away the biggest point scorer for us has been the ability to open up our internal TFS server to our clients. We have given our client access to our full project management tasks, documentation, questions forum, design diagrams, build history, project KPIs and progress in a second. A subset of all the information that we use internally is now available to our clients externally via a simple https:// link. The portal functionality basically comes out of the box. And every change we make, build we check, document we update etc is immediately available to our cilent.

And TFS gives you the ability to set up alerts for instant notification. All this at no cost to us, other than the initial setup which we had to do anyway.

To me this is an awesome boost in professionalism – perception is everything remember! – and we were very excited to deliver this to our clients. They love it by the way.

The second thing I like is the workflow it gives – out of the box most people will go with the MSF agile methodology template and strip it back (top down). This is OK but not great, ideally you want to spend the time building a template that matches your internal processes (ie bottom up). Scott Scovell has been working on this side of things but it wasn’t ready in time for our current project. (Scott will be blogging about that side of things in due course.)

The third main point is the developer tools it gives. Now, it’d be wrong of me to cover these – honestly I haven’t got anywhere near that level of detail (sadly I mainly manage these days – my days of developing are fast fading) so I’ll leave that for the Scotts to discuss later. However I’ve seen how the guys use it and they are very positive about the clarity it brings to the workload – it is a no brainer as to what they need to do, when to do it and how much time they’ve been allocated to do it. Not that this is a new concept to any company, but now developers have a simple way of managing their tasks without leaving their development environment. This is one of the main points Team System promised, and I feel it has delivered well.

My focus in TFS has been how we as a company can use it to improve processes, developer productivity, customer involvement and overall project management. As a software manager I am very cautious when it comes to using Beta products, so the move to running a large project on a product not yet released has been a careful one.

Cost considerations

I’d like to point out that this particular project has 5 developers working on it, so the cost of the setup is able to be absorbed over their combined resource. Had the project been smaller the cost may not have been so quickly repaid. So be careful about jumping into a TFS based system – the time taken to get it working for your project is not minimal. However, once done, it is easily used on all projects.

Also, we have TFS on a dedicated server. In our case this is a dual Xeon blade, since we want it to handle growth. But, don’t assume you are going to get away with one of the old unused desktop machines hanging around your office. Note also that TFS uses SQL Server, so you will need to handle that requirement also. Licensing is a sore point to some, but just part of the cost of good project management in my opinion. (Note – TFS includes a SQL license for its own purposes).

My opinion, although I don’t really know what the Microsoft line on this is, is that TFS is not a small company (eg 1 – 4 developer) option. Not that it couldn’t still be used, but I question the ROI it’d deliver.

Summary

Summary, TFS has a resonable cost that needs to be carefully factored in to the decision.

However, if the cost is acceptable (or trivial as it will be in the big shows) then the power, productivity and perception that TFS promises is certainly possible. I’m far from convinced that .Net as a technology has delivered anywhere near what we’ve all hoped for, however, without doubt TFS has given software development a huge push forward.

I’ve been going through the Barnardos (a kid’s charity) annual report. Part of the reason for reviewing the report is to ensure our dollars are used the best they can be – ie are we getting the best ‘return’ on our charitable ‘investment’.
[Sorry if this sounds too clinical, but with over 1,000 registered charities in Australia, I think you need to be picky about who you give your money to].

So, here’s the summary of what Barnados have done in the 2004/05 financial year.

1. They raised $24.2M, with 30% coming from donations (the rest is largely from Government funding)
2. They spent $24.1M, primarily on welfare centres (however $1.2M was on marketing including fundraising)
3. They helped 7,025 children, and over 1,000 of these involved court action

As a very rough average this meant that they spent $3,429 per child to ensure the child was assisted in escaping neglect or abuse.

Three things surprised me about these figures:
1. They achieve so much with so little.
7,000 children is a lot of children. Think of your average high school, and then times it by 10. That is about the size being helped. And then think of $24M – it is peanuts. Some CEOs in Australia earn more than that each year (OK, I hate it when people trot out comparisons with highly paid executives too, but you get the picutre).

2. The $/child cost is so low
Where I work we charge over $5,000 for a week of consulting. It would be very rare for us to even do a program mod for less that $3,429. So, for the equivalent of what we charge a client for a small program change a child is being helped. This is a comparison I can relate to easily.

3. The government is a big helper.
Close to 70% of the welfare that a charity like Barnardos provides comes from Government coffers (mostly State Gov btw). I didn’t realise the level Government contributed.

Ofcourse the saddest thing is how great the need is – for the thousands of kids helped, there are thousands missed (and in other countries these thousands no doubt turn into millions).

Also sad is the cycle that neglect breeds. Neglected children in turn are extremely likely to neglect their own children down the track. Barnardos helps break the cycle.

I’ve been going through the Barnardos (a kid’s charity) annual report. Part of the reason for reviewing the report is to ensure our dollars are used the best they can be – ie are we getting the best ‘return’ on our charitable ‘investment’.[Sorry if this sounds too clinical, but with over 1,000 registered charities in Australia, I think you need to be picky about who you give your money to].So, here’s the summary of what Barnados have done in the 2004/05 financial year.1. They raised $24.2M, with 30% coming from donations (the rest is largely from Government funding)2. They spent $24.1M, primarily on welfare centres (however $1.2M was on marketing including fundraising)3. They helped 7,025 children, and over 1,000 of these involved court actionAs a very rough average this meant that they spent $3,429 per child to ensure the child was assisted in escaping neglect or abuse.Three things surprised me about these figures:1. They achieve so much with so little. 7,000 children is a lot of children. Think of your average high school, and then times it by 10. That is about the size being helped. And then think of $24M – it is peanuts. Some CEOs in Australia earn more than that each year (OK, I hate it when people trot out comparisons with highly paid executives too, but you get the picutre).2. The $/child cost is so lowWhere I work we charge over $5,000 for a week of consulting. It would be very rare for us to even do a program mod for less that $3,429. So, for the equivalent of what we charge a client for a small program change a child is being helped. This is a comparison I can relate to easily.3. The government is a big helper. Close to 70% of the welfare that a charity like Barnardos provides comes from Government coffers (mostly State Gov btw). I didn’t realise the level Government contributed.Ofcourse the saddest thing is how great the need is – for the thousands of kids helped, there are thousands missed (and in other countries these thousands no doubt turn into millions).Also sad is the cycle that neglect breeds. Neglected children in turn are extremely likely to neglect their own children down the track. Barnardos helps break the cycle.

So, how fitting that I can use this milestone to announce a special bonus about OzFox Lite…

Thanks to the generosity of Microsoft and in particular Andrew Coates for his great support, I am pleased to say that the registration fee for OzFox Lite will be zero.

I’m really glad we can do this, and make OzFox Lite very code-camp like. So, what possible excuse could you have for not coming? It is on a weekend (to minimise time away from your business), is easy to get to (Microsoft headquarters in Sydney), and you have plenty of notice (it is still 6 weeks away). Oh, and I will have some exciting speaker related news next week.

Note, you still need to register for OzFox Lite, so that we can cater appropriately. Details on how to register are on the site.

During my holidays this week I watched a documentary on the making of Hysteria – one of the classic rock albums of all time. I was stunned to learn of all the trials the band had to overcome in order to get this album out. It took 4 years, required firing the first two producers and ofcourse includes the horrific crash in which drummer Rick Allen lost his left arm.

My favourite part is the recounting of their gig at Donington in ’86 – their first concert in 4 years, and the first with Rick drumming with one arm. Joe Elliot explains that they didn’t want to play on the sympathy vote so they resisted making any mention of Rick. Finally toward the end of the show he (Joe) felt they had to say something. He simply turned to the crowd and said ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, Rick Allen’. An audience of over 60,000 erupted with screams and applause. Emotional stuff.

Hysteria went on to sell over 17 million albums. Def Leppard are one of only five bands in the world to have had two albums each sell more than 10 million copies (the others are Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, The Eagles and Van Halen btw)

I dusted off my copy of Hysteria and have had it on constant rotation in the car ever since. A little dated now ofcourse (it was released in 1987) but none the less this is a truly great album.

Thanks to Craig Boyd for summarising the FoxPro conferences this year (and I note Milind has done likewise here). Note that in the comments on Craig Boyd’s post there is a pointer to the Brazilian conference coming in the ‘1st Semeter of 2006’.

[As an aside, it would be nice if we could pick up comments via RSS as updates to a post – perhaps this is something easy I have missed? – it is very rare for me to visit blog sites these days – most of my reading is via my reader and I expect this is the norm]

I’d like to send special encouragement to Kevin Cully and his Fox Forward conference. I was a first time conference organiser with OzFox 2004 and if I had received a post like Craig Berntson’s here I would have been devastated. But then again, better to be told upfront and remedy the situation (see here for how Kevin is proactively improving his offering). And yes, AV was one of the killers for me too.

So, how fitting that I can use this milestone to announce a special bonus about OzFox Lite…

Thanks to the generosity of Microsoft and in particular Andrew Coates for his great support, I am pleased to say that the registration fee for OzFox Lite will be zero.

I’m really glad we can do this, and make OzFox Lite very code-camp like. So, what possible excuse could you have for not coming? It is on a weekend (to minimise time away from your business), is easy to get to (Microsoft headquarters in Sydney), and you have plenty of notice (it is still 6 weeks away). Oh, and I will have some exciting speaker related news next week.

Note, you still need to register for OzFox Lite, so that we can cater appropriately. Details on how to register are on the site.

During my holidays this week I watched a documentary on the making of Hysteria – one of the classic rock albums of all time. I was stunned to learn of all the trials the band had to overcome in order to get this album out. It took 4 years, required firing the first two producers and ofcourse includes the horrific crash in which drummer Rick Allen lost his left arm.

My favourite part is the recounting of their gig at Donington in ’86 – their first concert in 4 years, and the first with Rick drumming with one arm. Joe Elliot explains that they didn’t want to play on the sympathy vote so they resisted making any mention of Rick. Finally toward the end of the show he (Joe) felt they had to say something. He simply turned to the crowd and said ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, Rick Allen’. An audience of over 60,000 erupted with screams and applause. Emotional stuff.

Hysteria went on to sell over 17 million albums. Def Leppard are one of only five bands in the world to have had two albums each sell more than 10 million copies (the others are Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, The Eagles and Van Halen btw)

I dusted off my copy of Hysteria and have had it on constant rotation in the car ever since. A little dated now ofcourse (it was released in 1987) but none the less this is a truly great album.

Thanks to Craig Boyd for summarising the FoxPro conferences this year (and I note Milind has done likewise here). Note that in the comments on Craig Boyd’s post there is a pointer to the Brazilian conference coming in the ‘1st Semeter of 2006’.

[As an aside, it would be nice if we could pick up comments via RSS as updates to a post – perhaps this is something easy I have missed? – it is very rare for me to visit blog sites these days – most of my reading is via my reader and I expect this is the norm]

I’d like to send special encouragement to Kevin Cully and his Fox Forward conference. I was a first time conference organiser with OzFox 2004 and if I had received a post like Craig Berntson’s here I would have been devastated. But then again, better to be told upfront and remedy the situation (see here for how Kevin is proactively improving his offering). And yes, AV was one of the killers for me too.

You’ve probably seen the TIOBE index mentioned again in the chatter on UT. VFP is up to 16 now.

Whilst this is encouraging I’d have to say that having Visual FoxPro above VB.Net (it is at 19) doesn’t sound right to me. Not that I want to sound negative, rather just brace yourself in case Tiobe reviews their index calc in coming months.

The interesting thing for me in the index was to see VB classic move up two positions to 4 (keep in mind this is a product that has already had its Mainstream support retired).

I’m having a break for a week. This is one of my ‘forced’ holidays. Basically I have a habit of overdoing it workwise and then falling over with burnout. Not that I’m a workaholic or anything, rather I just don’t get any internal warning when I am about to crash. So, I decided this year to schedule in a week of forced holiday every 3 months, even if I didn’t need it (like now). I feel great. Although I have myself permission to do a little bit of coding, I will predominantly be relaxing – eg just borrowed some Xbox games from the local VideoEasy.

As an aside: I’m behind on blogs and emails. Apologies to the many people who have emailed me about VFP SE and OzFox lately. I’ll be replying when I get back next week.

You’ve probably seen the TIOBE index mentioned again in the chatter on UT. VFP is up to 16 now.Whilst this is encouraging I’d have to say that having Visual FoxPro above VB.Net (it is at 19) doesn’t sound right to me. Not that I want to sound negative, rather just brace yourself in case Tiobe reviews their index calc in coming months.The interesting thing for me in the index was to see VB classic move up two positions to 4 (keep in mind this is a product that has already had its Mainstream support retired). Java, C and C++ slog it out for the top 3 positions.

I’m having a break for a week. This is one of my ‘forced’ holidays. Basically I have a habit of overdoing it workwise and then falling over with burnout. Not that I’m a workaholic or anything, rather I just don’t get any internal warning when I am about to crash. So, I decided this year to schedule in a week of forced holiday every 3 months, even if I didn’t need it (like now). I feel great. Although I have myself permission to do a little bit of coding, I will predominantly be relaxing – eg just borrowed some Xbox games from the local VideoEasy.

As an aside: I’m behind on blogs and emails. Apologies to the many people who have emailed me about VFP SE and OzFox lately. I’ll be replying when I get back next week.